02 July 2012 11:19 AM

Iran, the West Bank and the Arab Spring: The big questions hanging over the Middle East

A gathering of Middle East experts and policymakers at a luxury resort hotel in Crete may seem an unlikely place to plot the future of the region. But here, overlooking the tiny island of Spinalonga, the conversation produced some different outcomes to the conventional wisdom.

Among the forecasts was that there was a 50pc chance that America or Israel (or both) would attack Iran and seek to take out its nuclear facilities within the next year; that the two-state solution for Israel-Palestine had run its course and that King Abdullah of Jordan would become a victim of the Arab revolts.

What is clear on Iran is that diplomatic talks involving six powers (the US, UK, Germany, France, China and Russia) have deadlocked and are going nowhere. President Obama has made it clear ‘that containment is not an option’ and if Governor Mitt Romney is elected, if anything, the US position will harden. In the view of the policy wonks, including a senior National Security Council official and former US ambassador to Iraq, if conflict does happen it will be a ‘long symmetrical war’ in which Iran will use terror and the US the classical instruments.

What is really worrying is that as with Iraq the aftermath has not even been discussed. The experts also see the military challenges as considerable with the US largely using air and sea power but a ground war unlikely. Other experts, recently in Israel, question its determination to go alone, or join in an American attack. The consensus here is that the Israeli security and intelligence communities believe an attack is not the solution. But that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will have the final say, is keeping on the pressure.

There is a view that the US and Israel are ‘squeezing the inner-membrane of an egg’ but not hard enough for it to break in the belief that Iran could back down, dismantle its centrifuges (capable of producing weapons) and quietly arrange for them to leave the Islamic state. But that may prove to be a far too rosy scenario.

On Israel-Palestine the future for the two state solution was seen by at least one well-known analyst and frequent critic of Israel’s policies as extremely gloomy. After ten years of intermittent talks, during neither side has properly engaged, it was concluded that the two-state solution – on which so many hopes have been placed – is going nowhere.

Over the last three or so years (and before that under George W Bush) this is largely because the Americans, who have been the main sponsors of the process have never really engaged.

Standing back it is not that surprising that the Palestinians have been reluctant too. Partly, this may have been, for a long time, about the tensions between Abu Abbas and the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. But an alternate view is that Israel as the overwhelming military, economic and security power in the region is never going to be an easy negotiating partner for a weak fledging Palestinian state.

So what to do? One worrying prospect being given some consideration in the Palestinian camp is a complete break in the negotiating process and a hostile revival of the rejectionist agenda. This could take the form of a third Intifada, with all that implies in terms of violence.

But perhaps harder for Israel would be a ‘propaganda intifada’ in which the Palestinians fully embrace the ‘apartheid,’ illegality and deligitimisation agenda – in an aggressive and resourceful manner – portraying Israel in a far worse light than ever before (if that is possible) and using this to beat Netanyahu and his colleagues into submission.

It could, in the view of the analyst concerned, be far more effective on the world stage than actual violence because of the essentially toxic nature of the apartheid charge for Israel’s government classes with their fundamental beliefs in democracy and human rights.

As for Israel one potential plan that has been discussed within Israel is to effectively annexe the West Bank, including the settlements, and declare it to be Israeli territory. As a result all West Bank Arab citizens would be offered full Israeli citizenship including all the benefits that would come along with it from voting and stronger legal rights as access to Israel’s social welfare.

In effect it would be an Israeli led ‘one state’ solution, rather than two state, and set aside Israel’s longstanding fears about the so called ‘demographic time-bomb’ as a result of Arab birth rates outpacing those of Israelis.

It must be said that such radical solutions are almost certainly outliers. But likely will be discussed ever more frequently given the way the two state solution has been caught in a quicksand.

Finally, the Arab Spring (although Middle East experts no longer want to call it that). It was concluded here that the only country where there had been any kind of successful outcome from the revolts across the region was Tunisia. If anything the underlying causes of the uprisings, unemployment, surging food prices and malfunctioning political systems have become worse.

In the most important country in the region, Egypt, the new President Mohammed Morsi has made some flattering noises about links to Iran but these should not be taken too seriously.

However, a radical axis of Iran, potentially a post Assad Syria and Egypt would be something of a frightening proposition for the world.

For the moment the belief is that Egypt needs the West and in particular the US’s annual ‘peace’ subvention of several billion dollars and the additional resources to come from IMF and World Bank programmes. This would be critical if the economy is to be stabilised and there is to be any chance of satisfying the social demands of its young population. There is a possibility that it could open up the Gaza border and turn the illegitimate trade through the tunnels into a proper export channel and allow freer movement of population. It may be a rational economic policy but would raise all kinds of new security concerns for Israel.

Elsewhere across the Arab world there appears to be a belief among Western experts that Bashar al-Assad’s days in Damascus are numbered, but no one is clear what will follow. It is thought that Russia, with its traditional strategic role in Syria, may be more effective at getting him and his followers out of office than the UN.

One of the more worrying predictions is that the Arab revolt will move to Jordan, currently Israel’s most reliable partner in the region. Social tensions are believed to be high and King Abdullah and his court, their free spending Western ways, and lack of economic progress for large parts of the population have left him stranded and unpopular. It is not clear that he and the Hashemite dynasty will be able to turn the tide of change.

The Arab revolts, in the view of the experts and policymakers encountered, have still to fully run their course.

Share this article:

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

A curious jaunt for a financial journalist. Who organised it? How much did it cost you? Or did someone else pay? Who? Does the answer to any of the above explain the tacit acceptance of so many dubious assumptions? What do you consider the role of a journalist?

"Ewan"'s tone is aggressive but the substance of his questions is reasonable enough to deserve a response (other than simply to delete them from the main site, as appears to have happened). Could you at least tell us what the conference was so that we can read the contributors' papers, or tell us who the experts and policymakers were so we can follow up the detail of their opinions elsewhere? To do so requires no mention of how you came to be there or why you feel qualified to propagate Israeli (or US?) opinion. Thank you in advance.

"Aggressive" - a fair rebuke. What roused my ire, however, still does. The spectrum of opinion in Israeli (and US) mainstream discourse is wafer thin. To present a summary of it as objective reporting of the situation in the Middle East, and not as reporting of official Israeli thinking with all its spoken and unspoken bias, is not what a journalist of such stature should do. By the way, I too would welcome the opportunity to read the papers presented at this conference. Most organisations put conference papers on line. Does this one (whatever it is)?

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this weblog until the moderator has approved them. They must not exceed 500 words. Web links cannot be accepted, and may mean your whole comment is not published.